Listen to the Mustn'ts Child

I can't help but think that Shel Silverstein would be rolling over in his grave right now if he knew that this was the response I just got from his lawyers.  Or maybe it's that I'm way off base and over-romanticizing the author who wrote my entire childhood's reading list.  Either way, I like to think of Shel Silverstein as the type of man that would embrace creativity and promote a child's pride in it.

Awhile back my daughter's Kindergarten teacher had an awesome idea to have parents and grandparents record themselves reading and create a sort of archive to use in her class.  My daughter and I took this idea and ran with it.  We created a beautiful video of The Giving Tree.  I really wish I could share that with you, but... see below.  We photocopied pictures from the text, and I recorded video of my daughter coloring each of the pictures in order as I narrated with the text of the book.  We threw in some slow, sad (Creative Commons licensed) background music and added the text of the book as captions so students could read along.  It really is a great video.  She took great pride in her coloring, and was so excited about our final product.  I shared this video file with my daughter's teacher to use in her classroom, and my daughter came home from school that day glowing because they got to watch "her movie" in class.

In addition to this teacher, I shared the video with my parents and another teacher friend of mine.  Everyone said exactly what was in the back of my mind, "You should put that on YouTube!"  But, the technology teacher in my knew that there were copyright issues with it, so I didn't.  I thought for awhile, and then shot an email off to the copyright owner of The Giving Tree (along with access to the actual video file) to ask for permission.  "I'll use this as a great example in my class," I thought.  "There's no way anyone involved with the Great Shel Silverstein would stifle the creativity of a kindergartner and her daddy, right?  I'll just wait until they say yes."

Here is what came into my inbox today:

Talk about disappointment.  I completely understand, however, that they own this copyright, and (for the time being ;-) I'll respect that.  But for the life of me, I can't understand why someone would reject the request to post this video to YouTube.  My channel isn't monetized.  I don't get more than ten views per video because only people in my family think to watch anything of mine.  Watching my video isn't going to replace buying the book for anyone who views it.  There is absolutely no downside to them if my video was published.  The only thing that would have happened would have been instilling pride in a kindergarten girl to have something she worked on and created "published" on YouTube.

So, Shel, should I listen to the mustnt's, the don'ts, and the shouldn'ts?  You told me as a child that "Anything can happen, child.  Anything can be."  Apparently you didn't plan on dealing with your own legal team.

P.S. - To SBG Law, 

Thanks for giving me permission to publish this letter in the footer of your response email.  You're swell.  Also, I realize that I didn't correctly use parenthetical citations in my text above when quoting one of my other favorite Shel Silverstein books.  Just to help me stay out of any more trouble with you, here's the A.P.A. citation:

Silverstein, S. (1974). Where the sidewalk ends: the poems & drawings of Shel Silverstein.. New York: Harper and Row.